It was Pina Bausch’s last work with a corset. Already loosened up, but the well-known story and the music by Christoph Willibald Gluck define the framework in which the dancers move. And the singing. Because “Orpheus and Eurydice”, staged by Bausch in 1974, is a dance opera. In the Stadttheater Fürth, where in April in the Wuppertal place of work the choreographer who died in 2009 the premiere of the new production that opened the Gluck Festival, you can see what it’s all about. The roles of Orpheus, whose voice turns Hades into heaven, that of his beloved Eurydice, whom he wants to bring back from the realm of the dead, and that of the god of love Cupid are duplicated: once dancing and once singing. In the breathtaking finale alone, this leads to such complex entanglements of intensity and perspective that you would need two or even three more visits to the theater to appreciate all the subtleties. One thing is certain: contrary to the strict instructions, Orpheus turns to his disappointed Eurydice. And because Bausch apparently does not share Gluck’s belief in the transforming power of music and love, four bodies end up lying crosswise one on top of the other. And the whole hall stands – and donates ovations.
The venture of new director Michael Hofstetter pays off
That was by no means a matter of course. Because for the co-producing Gluck Festival it is a risk to show such revolutionary dance. And even though the revolution is already 47 years old. The newly appointed director, who is also at the conductor’s desk himself, succeeded in taking the risk. Michael Hofstetter has the catchy score played as slowly as was customary in the 1970s, but with historical instruments. For baroque music gourmets, this combination may take some getting used to. But the Handel Festival Orchestra Halle and the vocally highly present choir almost steal the show from the sometimes too quiet vocal soloists. Not, however, the countertenor Valer Sabadus, who sings the male title role (alternating with the mezzo-soprano Vero Miller) – and not the more than two dozen dancers. Bausch’s longtime assistant Josephine Ann Endicott handed over the choreography, which after 2005 could only be seen in the repertoire of the Paris Opera, to a young generation of dancers: these waving arms and breaking movements that correspond to the waves and the fractures in the soul.
No happy ending in the realm of shadows: but did death really triumph over the love of Orpheus and Eurydice?
(Photo: Krystyna Jalowa/Gluck Festival)
Deviating from Gluck’s three-act structure, Bausch created four pictures, overwritten with announcements in capital letters: MOURNING, VIOLENCE, PEACE and DYING. Each emotional state gives shape to this enormously well-aged synthesis of the arts, in which many Bausch ingredients are already contained: these bare arms drawing a spell and stroking hands over one’s own body, the long skirts in which it is enough to lift one leg to To expand Rolf Borzik’s eerily beautiful stage tableaux figuratively. A dry, uprooted tree is enough for him to “mourn”. The “violence” is exerted by three dancers in butcher’s aprons in front of a prison forest made of oversized wooden chairs, who embody Cerberus, the hellhound, with a jumpy-martial movement vocabulary. The larger-than-life bride, who initially stands rigidly in the corner, is also great. The bodies of the furies are transparently covered with black gauze, while the dancing half of Orpheus, Pau Aran Gimeno, wears only underpants for two and a half hours: a Jesus-like, emaciated figure of suffering! What all this meant in 1975 can only be gauged indirectly: For example, by how contemporary it all still seems. And these somnambulously flowing, slacking, statuesquely stiffening bodies and then slumping back without tension cheekily manage without the formal corset of ballet and develop an immense spatial effect.
Although it has just been released, the lavish production will probably not be seen again in the next season, even at the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. One more reason to shout: Let’s go to Fürth!
“Orpheus and Eurydice”, only on May 2nd, 7.30 p.m., to the remaining program: www.gluck-festspiele.de